But to return to the road, which presently comes to the charming village of Froxfield, with its wide village green and great red-brick barracks of almshouses, founded in 1686 by Sarah, Duchess of Somerset, for fifty clergymen’s widows, and perched up on a bank above the right-hand side of the highway. SAVERNAKE FOREST Thence, nearly all the way into Marlborough, seven miles ahead, the road lies through Savernake Forest The Marquis of Ailesbury, to whom this noble demesne (the only Forest in the possession of a subject) belongs, has his residence near the southern boundary of the Forest, at Tottenham House, which is a singularly plain building externally, and so reminiscent in name of the Tottenham Court Road that it would have been exquisitely appropriate had the late Marquis sold the estate to Sir John Blundell Maple instead of to Lord Iveagh. I suppose the eccentricities of the late Marquis of Ailesbury will become the subject of curious legends in the coming by-and-by. He was born out of his time, and was a kind of “throw-back” to earlier types that flourished when the Prince Regent and the Toms and Jerrys disported themselves in the famous Corinthian manner. The glades of Savernake still remain in the family, but were alienated to Lord Iveagh, the man of Dublin The late Marquis had a perfect genius for dissipating wealth. A “horsey” man among the “horsey,” his favourite companions were sporting men of the more unrefined type, and he was hail-fellow with the cab-men and ’bus-men of London. Radicals found in his career a text for their discourses and a reason for abolishing the House of Lords as an hereditary chamber; and the ballet-girls of the London theatres regarded him as all a Peer should be. One who knew “Lord Stomach-ache,” as he was playfully nicknamed before he had succeeded to the Marquisate and was yet Lord Savernake, said— “The wealth and colour of his lordship’s language surprised me. I never knew or heard a costermonger in the Dials with such a repertory. I saw him once with a couple of choice friends on a costermonger’s barrow, such as is used for hawking fish or vegetables. One ‘pal’ had a ‘yard of tin’ (or coaching horn), on which he tootled melodiously. His lordship wore a very high collar, a blue birds-eye belcher fastened with a nursery-pin for a necktie, a huge drab box-cloth coat with large mother-o’-pearl buttons, a low-crowned, broad-brimmed coachman’s hat, and a very tight pair For my own part, I think the latter part of that incident is the most creditable thing on record in the “short and merry” life of poor “Stomach-ache.” OLD TIMES ON THE ROAD Savernake Forest left behind, the road descends steeply down Forest Hill in the direction of Marlborough. This hill was one of the worst obstacles met with between London and Bath in the old times, and its steepness was then rendered more difficult by reason of the execrable surface of the road. This is the experience of one travelling to London about 1816: “Twenty times at least the eight horses came to a standstill, and had to be allowed their own time before they would move. For more than half the way up there lay an extensive encampment of gipsies along each side of the road, forming a most picturesque scene with their wild figures, their bright-coloured costumes, and dark bronzed skin; their white tents, and the numerous columns of blue, thin smoke that curled upwards and lost itself in the dense foliage. These stout vagabonds rendered us an essential service; they cheered and lashed the horses, they pushed bodily in the rear, and they climbed the spokes of the revolving wheels, to send them round, with a recklessness and dexterity only acquired by long practice. To compensate them for their labour, the coachman halted at the top of the hill to give “During the first half of the journey to London our pace would not average more than four miles an hour, and sometimes the tramps and wanderers of the road would keep up with us for the hour together, especially the pedlars and packmen, who would display their Brummagem wares, and now and then effect a sale as we rumbled along.” A wide view extends from here, over the valley of the Kennet, with Marlborough lying in its hollow, and the Wiltshire downs, stretching away in bare rolling masses, in the direction of Swindon. Marlborough develops itself slowly as one descends, and becomes lost for a time as the panoramic view sinks out of sight. |